Ghost stories from Friends Visits

The Hollow Man in the Attic

When I was two years old, my family lived in a sprawling Victorian house in the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. The house was old, with creaking floors and a dusty...

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The Tally Man

Growing up, I’d only ever had two brushes with the unexplainable, and the first one was something my family referred to as ‘the tally man.’ Not a ghost, not a...

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The Polypropylene Hail

The morning after Aunt Maren passed, the house on Cedar Lane held its breath. We had gathered to sort through her things, a necessary evil wrapped in the smell of...

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The Ledger of Unfinished Days

The first time I saw the ledger, it was propped against the pickle jar on the kitchen windowsill, its leather cover black as a wet grave. My grandmother, Elara Thorne,...

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The Linen Hall

Marta had always found comfort in the quiet afternoons of her new apartment, nestled above a closed-in linen shop in the old district. The town of Varnley was a place...

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The Last Bloom of Itzel

When I was nine, my grandmother Itzel passed from a sickness that hollowed her out from the inside. Her death left a silence in our house that no one spoke...

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The Grain and the Gable

My grandmother’s hands were always moving, even when she sat still. She’d pluck at her apron, smooth the worn denim over her knees, trace the grain of the oak table...

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The Ledger of Unfinished Things

The morning light crept through the dusty blinds of my rented studio apartment like a tired intruder, painting thin stripes across the cluttered floor. I woke with the usual weight...

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The Visitor at 2:47

Mara was twenty-three weeks pregnant and had spent every one of those weeks in a state of gnawing unease. It wasn’t the physical discomfort, though that was constant—the ache in...

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The Phantom at the Pantry Door

It was a Tuesday, just past nine, when I found myself in the kitchen of my tiny apartment, making a late-night snack. The fluorescent light hummed overhead, casting a sterile...

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The Persistent Finch

I was six weeks old when my grandfather passed, so I have no memory of the man himself, only the stories my mother tells and the strange presence that has...

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The Rook’s Last Caw

I turned twelve on a Tuesday, and my parents finally agreed to leave me alone for the night. It was a small victory, but it tasted like freedom. My older...

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The Empty Rocking Chair

Marta had just finished wiping down the kitchen counters when she heard the soft thud-thud of tiny feet padding across the linoleum. Her daughter, two-year-old Elsie, had a habit of...

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The Fog on Route 9

My name is Elara, and I’ve always carried a peculiar gift, passed down from my mother and her mother before her. While others rely on sight and sound, I perceive...

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The Clockmaker’s Embrace

In the autumn of 1998, I was six, living with my parents and my older brother in a creaking, centuries-old house in the outskirts of a small Vermont town. My...

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The Lantern’s Last Light

I’ve always been a magnet for the other side. They drift to me like moths to a porch light, their whispers and cold touches as familiar as my own heartbeat....

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The Cardboard Box

In the autumn of 2003, I was twenty-two, living alone for the first time in a cramped studio apartment above a laundromat in a town that had seen better days....

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The Lantern Man

Three years after the funeral of my mother’s father, I found myself standing in the dusty vestibule of the old Ferris farmhouse, where my uncle Angus had just died. The...

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The Unseen Weight

It was late September when the rains came to the small coastal town of Port Blossom. The season had turned without ceremony, the leaves on the elms along Harbor Street...

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The Crossover Protocol

I was twelve, standing at the corner of Maple and 9th, waiting for the light to change. My friends, Jake and Lila, were arguing about which comic book character would...

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The Constant Gardener

The summer before my daughter turned one, I drove three hours north to my mother’s farmhouse, carrying a hamper of dirty clothes and a heart heavy with the weight of...

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The Weight of Water

The summer Leo turned thirteen, the Whitley twins were the undisputed kings of the Holloway Reservoir. Not that anyone would crown them. To the town, they were trouble—wild-eyed boys who...

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